Last year I wrote here about the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s ridiculous “disparate impact” lawsuit against Kaplan Higher Learning Corp. The Obama administration sued Kaplan for running credit checks on employee applicants – similar, by the way, to the ones the EEOC itself uses.  Kaplan had learned that some of its employees had misappropriated student payments and, to provide safeguards against this behavior, it began screening its applicants for major red flags in their credit histories. The EEOC sued Kaplan, arguing that it cannot use credit checks, because use of credit checks has a disparate impact on black applicants. Anyway, …

In his remarks at the “Strengthening the Relationship Between Law Enforcement and Communities of Color Forum” last week, Associate Attorney General Tony West gets the ball rolling this way: “Let me also express appreciation to Reverend Al Sharpton, not only for joining us this morning but for his leadership, day in and day out, on issues of reconciliation and community restoration.”  Al Sharpton — a leader for “reconciliation”?  Really? Mr. West also praises New York City mayor Bill de Blasio: “In the short time the Mayor has been in office, the Justice Department has established a productive working partnership with the City of …

Here’s an interesting story from Bloomberg View about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB likes to use the “disparate impact” approach in its regulation of banks, but the American Banker has obtained data showing that the Bureau’s own employment practices might not fare very well under this approach (which puts a premium on racial/ethnic/gender bean-counting).  “Specifically, CFPB managers show a pattern of ranking white employees distinctly better than minorities in performance reviews used to grant raises and issue bonuses. Overall, whites were twice as likely in 2013 to receive the agency’s top grade than were African-American or Hispanic employees, the data …

But first, before turning to “My Brother’s Keeper”:  Senator Harry Reid has filed cloture on President Obama’s nomination of Debo Adegbile to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and set the full Senate’s vote on it for Tuesday.  I’m told that red-state Democrats are not happy about this vote, and rightly so, especially in light of Mr. Adegbile’s enthusiastic and politicized defense of convicted Philadelphia cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal (among other radical credentials). I’ve written about the nomination here and here, and the Wall Street Journal ran an excellent op-ed last week opposing the nomination, by Republican Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey and Democratic Philadelphia district attorney R. Seth Williams. …

It’s been a busy year so far at the Center for Equal Opportunity, and it’s only February. Earlier this month I spoke at Vermont Law School, and this week I’m traveling to Minnesota to speak to the law schools at St. Thomas University and William Mitchell College of Law.  (Some Florida law schools, rather than Vermont and Minnesota, might have been a better choice for this month, but I’m not complaining.)  Last month I spoke at the Greater McLean Republican Women’s Club in Northern Virginia. The Center for Equal Opportunity was quoted in an AP story on desegregation and a …

“An Update on the Mess at Bowdoin” is the all-too-accurate title of this piece by KC Johnson at Minding the Campus. Professor Johnson summarizes the proceedings at an event this month, held by the Maine Heritage Policy Center and National Association of Scholars, that builds on NAS’s comprehensive study of political correctness at Bowdoin College; this month the focus was on what Bowdoin proudly calls its efforts to ensure that students there are taught to be proper “global citizens.”  Speakers included Peter Wood, John Fonte, Michael Poliakoff, Susan Shell, and Herb London. Here’s Peter Wood’s graceful essay on the conference.  Center for Equal Opportunity …

The Senate Judiciary Committee has voted 10-8 along party lines to send to the Senate floor the nomination of Debo Adegbile to head the Justice Department’s civil-rights division. As I noted earlier, the Obama administration certainly had its work cut out for it when it tried to find someone farther to the left than Thomas Perez to head the Justice Department’s civil-rights division, but it appears to have succeeded. Among his other accomplishments, Mr. Adegbile went out of his way to play a role in defending cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, an international cause célèbre on the left, prompting the Fraternal Order …